What's behind the curtain?

[mbarker]

What do you consider an android? Or a robot?

The TV this morning had a short human interest story about a new play going on in Tokyo. The venue is "Disturbing Theater" (in English!). The short clip of the play that they showed had a very plain stage, with two stairways in the background. One seated figure on the audience's left faced another figure on the right. Both were female. The one on the right started out sitting, then got up while talking to the seated figure, took the hand of the seated one, and so forth. The seated one turned her head, looked at the other person as she stood up, and engaged in conversation.

As the TV show pointed out, the seated figure has a secret. She is an android, a robot. From her seated figure, an electrical line runs back offstage somewhere. You may have seen clips of this android -- her face, along with the researcher in Tokyo, have been showing up various places.

For most of the audience, the experience is simply seeing the play between a living actor and a robot. And of course, people find this rather interesting.

The TV show, however, followed the electrical line to the backstage room. Where a woman sat, watching screens that showed her the view from the android's eyes. And a TV camera and computers tracked her face, analyzing it and having the robot mirror her expressions and motions. The woman behind the scenes also talked into a microphone, and that was the voice of the robot.

As I watched their explanation of what was going on behind the scenes, I started to wonder about calling this an android or a robot. It seems to me it's more like an electronic marionette, a sophisticated hand puppet, a giant Waldo. Kind of a big doll, with the hidden operator.

I think it's definitely useful, and a step towards building humanoid robots, since figuring out what it takes to mirror the actions of the operator is an obvious step on the way, but it's not really what I think of as a robot. I want at least a hint of self-initiated action, even if it's just selecting between various recorded scripts.

What do you think? Is this an android, a robot? Just because it can fool you into seeing emotions and thinking there is a live person there? Or is this just an electronic version of the chess playing doll from long ago?

Comments

[saruby.livejournal.com]

This depends entirely on your definition of android or robot. If you define "android" as an autonomous being, then this does not fit that category. In fact, I tend to think of robots and androids in this way. Able to move independently, having at least some capacity for independent thought and expression, but appearing human. The key word here is independent which obviously disqualifies this construction. However, in industry, machines that operate semi-independently (perform a series of complex movements that have been programmed) are considered "robots". Neither the woman in the chair nor the machine in the factory qualifies as a "robot" under my definition, but they are each steps along the way.

I think this is a cute gimmick, but I wonder how people would react to an actual "human" appearing android who was, in fact, capable of independent movement and thought. I am not talking about a "C-3PO" robot, but one that looks like flesh and blood. My guess is that will be uncomfortable for many people.

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

I think that's my problem -- I want more independence. I can certainly see using this model for "training" the system, but I want it to get to the point where it is doing some independent choices. Kind of like raising kids, I guess -- you want them to imitate up to a point, but then you want them to take off on their own.

As for the reception to human appearing androids -- Lots of good SF (and probably more bad) written about it.